Wednesday, January 04, 2017

Long Player #1 :AC/DC - Back in Black

Welcome to Long Player. Once a week, give or take
some holidays, for the foreseeable future (read: years?), I will be proceeding
through my vinyl music collection in alphabetical order. Some of these records
will be painfully obscure, others painfully well known. With most artists, I
will actually devote a different column to each album I have of theirs. In some
cases, I may lump several records together for one entry. Or none. I don’t
know. I’ll decide as I go and will have logic to go along with it.

In some ways, I feel like starting off with AC/DC’s
Back in Black is an intimidating thing to do. In other ways, it's the
most appropriate thing that could happen. Here's why. I’m taking a long,
thorough dive through my vinyl collection, something more interesting to me
than it could possibly be to anyone else. My LP collection is an oddity in some
ways. It's not the primary way I have ever bought music, but it's not
insubstantial in amount. I've gone deep on collecting certain things, and then
have spartan examples of other catalogues that I managed to get cheaply. Back
in Black is a perfect example of that as it's the only AC/DC album I have
on vinyl. I've had chances to buy others. I haven't yet done that.

It's also an album that has been written about a
million times over and the odds of me saying anything new or interesting about
it border on the infinitesimal. But since I've already admitted that this
writing exercise is more for me than anything else - and I'm truly hoping that
people enjoy it along the way, though that's not the point - then why not
tackle one of the monoliths of rock and roll?

Back in Black is of course a strange record in rock's history
because of its placement at the front of the second half of the Bon Scott/Brian
Johnson eras of the band. You'd be hard pressed to think of another band that
lost one of its key members (especially a lead singer) only to come back
immediately with a record that would become its most successful to date at the
time and one that defines the band to this day.

One thing I certainly like about the vinyl era of
music was the physical limitation. If you wanted to avoid spreading out onto a
second LP, you were limited to around 45 minutes of music or less. This made
albums fairly compact and to someone who grew up in the age of cassettes (60
minutes) and CDs (80 minutes), the smaller scale punch really stands out. I noticed
that most of my favorite albums of 2016 were in the 30 – 40 minute range. And
that’s not a surprise. Albums that length tend to hit with their best songs and
get out before wearing you down and also prompt repeat listening as a result.

Back in Black is a masterclass in this kind of thinking. It
clocks in at 42 minutes and each side basically rolls from barnstorming opener
(“Hells Bells” on side 1; the title track on side 2) into hellacious rockers
and fist pumping giants before settling into the slowest respective song on
each side. Which is not to be mistaken for a ballad. “Let Me Put My Love Into
You” at the end of side 1 is really all about setting you up for the monumental
“Back in Black” on the opening of the next side. “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise
Pollution” at the end of the record is just a nice, heavy sigh by way of
winding things up.

My 21-month old daughter came home about a month
ago singing Queen’s “We Will Rock You.” I have no idea who taught her this or
why, but it eventually lead me to bring up the video for the song on YouTube
for her to see. Now of course I’m stuck playing that video, or the song itself
on Spotify, over and over for her. (On the plus side, with the percussion instrument
set I got her for Christmas, I’ve managed to get her to imitate the iconic
thump-thump-pop of the song. She’s the next Janet Weiss, guys, I’m serious.)
But in doing so, I’ve been forced to re-evaluate a song that I’d long cordoned
off in the same part of the world as Gary Glitter’s “Rock and Roll Part 2” and,
well, Queen’s “We Are the Champions” from the same album as “We Will Rock You.”
And in doing so rediscovered what’s so engaging about it in the first place.

Same with Back in Black. The big hits on
the album are massive. To have escaped “Back in Black,” “Hells Bells” or the
gigantic “You Shook Me All Night Long” somehow implies a level of purposeful cultural
ignorance that I would tip my hat to. Even “Shoot to Thrill,” never a single,
has appeared in too many big move soundtracks to count. All of these songs come
back to life within the context of the album. “Hells Bells” is an opener with
few peers in rock. “Back in Black” is the same for the second side.

And “You Shook Me All Night Long” is the poppiest
song on the album, earning its ubiquitous presence in our culture. I find
myself singing along with it in a way that would seem tedious if I ran across
it on classic rock radio. Context is everything in the case of a lot of these
songs. But it’s interesting to think about in comparison with the bloated
modern album. Do big singles regain anything within the span of albums like
Drake’s VIEWS? Or are their purposeful single-hood pointed out all the
more? And is this an effect of the era-of-bloat or more about Back in Black’s
status as an unimpeachable album from front to back? Clearly the answer is the
latter, but the svelte size of Back in Black doesn’t hurt.

And it is pretty perfect. Even the deep cuts
(god, “Shake a Leg,” y’all – for real) are golden and carry the album along
transcendentally. I read a listener review of the album over at AllMusic where
they basically said “Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution” is the worst song on
the album but only because its slow, winding-down throb just suffers a bit by
comparison after the previous 37-and-a-half minutes of lightning. I find that a
legitimate argument, but if that song is the worst on your album, you’re doing
something right.

Plus, also, Veruca Salt’s American Thighs.
I do really enjoy band lyric references in other bands’ album titles.

And, what the hell, let’s just rank the songs on
this album for the fun of it. I may do this with every album, or I may not.

10. Let Me Put My Love Into You
9. Have a Drink on Me
8. Rock and Roll Ain’t Noise Pollution
7. Given the Dog a Bone
6. Shoot to Thrill
5. What Do You Do For Money Honey
4. Hells Bells
3. You Shook Me All Night Long
2. Shake a Leg
1. Back in Black